Why
can't Koreans see Japan
straight? By Aidan
Foster-Carter
I've had therapy, and I
don't mind saying so. Some people - especially men
- are reluctant to admit this, as if it were a
weakness. But that's wrong. It's just like going
to the doctor, or getting your car fixed. If you
need it, go do it. So I went. It took a while, but
I'm fine now.
Why might you need it? When
there is stuff in your life, past or present, that
holds you back. So, deal with it. Don't deny it,
or bury it; that's often the problem. But you want
to get over it: put it in a place where it no
longer hurts so much, or stops you seeing straight
and getting on with your life. You can't change
the past - but you can put it behind you and move
on.
As with individuals, so with nations.
At the risk of losing friends in
my favorite country, I
shall stick my neck out and bluntly ask: Why can't
most South Koreans see Japan straight? (The same
goes for North Koreans, for that matter.) Should
they, dare I say, get help on this?
What
prompts this thought is a recent row, the subject
of my last article, South
Korea: A deal too far with Japan (Asia Times
Online, July 16, 2012). You may want to read that
first. In brief: A perfectly anodyne, innocent,
sensible plan for South Korea and Japan to share
intelligence bit the dust because of a public
backlash in the former.
As I wrote before,
it was totally wrong and stupid that the South
Korean government tried to sneak this pact
through. Yet the press and public outcry against
it is wildly overblown, and based on
considerations that are exaggerated, irrational,
or irrelevant - quite often all three.
Left and right unite To see what
I mean, take a look at two bastions of the Seoul
press. In the right corner, the venerable Chosun
Ilbo. In the left corner - a lonelier spot in
South Korea - a newer upstart, the Hankyoreh
Shinmun. Both have good English editions, and can
normally be relied on to disagree about
everything. If you want to know the conservative
take on any issue, read the Chosun. For the
liberal counter-arguments, consult the Hanky (as
it is affectionately known).
Yet on one
issue - the alleged iniquities of Japan, which can
do no right ever - these foes are united. Their
editorials recently have been hard to tell apart.
The Chosun puts a useful set of links to related
articles at the foot of most of its pages, and the
headlines tell their own story:
Keep a close eye on Japanese moves
to re-arm
No plans to scrap military
pact with Japan
Japan seeks to relax
curbs on military deployment
Official
Chinese paper slams Korea-Japan military
pact
Japan's 10 most dangerous
reactors face Korea
Japan sets alarms
ringing with ominous nuclear
bill
Japan resumes work on nuclear
processing plant
S Korea, US, Japan
at odds over joint naval drill
Japan
to build new helicopter
carrier
Military cooperation with
Japan must be clearly limited
I
could go on, and they do. As the titles indicate,
some of these are real, important stories. But you
can hardly miss the slant. Japan is an object of
suspicion in all it does, a priori.
And
the Hanky? Its lists of links is less long, but
the angle is the same:
Resist Japan's attempts to arm
itself
Japan apparently moving toward
more active military
Military
agreement with Japan of questionable
value
Japan to send destroyers to
China's doorstep
No nukes for
Japan
Don't just delay, scrap
military agreement with Japan
A
formal apology must come before alliance with
Japan
MB government getting
uncomfortably cozy with
Japan
Why not get
cozy? You get the picture. Let's start with
that last one. Why exactly should today's South
Korea, under whatever leader, not get cozy with
today's Japan?
Indeed, what could be more
natural than for two countries with so much in
common to draw closer together? Consider.
Geographically, they're neighbors. Politically,
they are both full democracies: still a rare
species in the neighborhood. Economically, these
are Asia's second- and fourth-biggest economies;
in commerce the world's fourth- and
seventh-largest exporters. Because of this and
lacking raw materials, both rely on safe sea lanes
to protect their trade.
Strategically,
each is a close ally of the United States. Both
belong to the Group of 20, and they are Asia's
sole members thus far of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.
Institutionally they share much, including a
now-eroding corporatist state-business nexus.
Historically ... and that's where the
trouble lies. No question, Japan's crimes during
the 40 years - not long, as colonialisms go:
contrast the Philippines, with its 333 years under
Spain - when it ruled Korea were many and brutal.
They include slave labor, making Koreans take
Japanese names, and efforts to suppress the Korean
language. The "comfort women" issue is especially
vile, and I strongly agree that Tokyo should do
far more to atone for this. Paying them proper
compensation might go a long way to lance the boil
this article is about.
Painful
pasts Here as always, a painful past must
be exposed and confronted. But it must also be
accepted, and for some reason this seems
especially difficult for Koreans. Others have
managed it, in a context of yet greater evil.
Israel and Germany are friends, despite Adolf
Hitler and the Holocaust.
This isn't just
about Japan. Does any other country, or language,
have a phrase equivalent to the Korean kwago
chongsan, meaning "cleansing history"? To me
that phrase makes no kind of sense. Like (say)
"romancing toothbrush", this verb and noun simply
don't fit together.
Yet South Korea has
seen big debates about this. A decade ago I
weighed into one such, and got a good kicking -
though not from Koreans, interestingly. You can
still read it all here.
Here's one of the comments that got me in
hot water:
Coming to Korea from Africa, it
puzzled me how hard it is to have a grown-up
discussion about colonialism here. In this at
least, Africa is well ahead of Korea. Teaching
in Tanzania barely a decade after British rule
had ended, despite a highly politicized
atmosphere of anti-imperialism, there was
neither personal nor academic animus involved in
researching the colonial past. (It helps, of
course, if you call it colonialism rather than
occupation, not least in avoiding divisive and
fruitless arguments about so-called
"collaborators".)
I still stand by all
of that, not least the last bit. Even today,
two-thirds of a century after it all ended, South
Koreans are still debating who collaborated and
who didn't. Talk about sins of the fathers, and
more than a whiff of North Korea's songbun
system - on which, by the way, see a fine new
report at the website of the Committee for Human
Rights in North Korea, hrnk.org - where
who your parents were can ruin you for life.
So even in South Korea, if your
grandfather was pally with the oppressor, then you
suffer for it - including having your land
confiscated if it was given to him by Japan. Maybe
that is a kind of justice, but where and when does
it stop? Surely at some point you've to draw a
line.
A stupid bunch of
rocks Nearly all South Korean grievances
against Japan are blasts from the past. The one
exception is a stupid bunch of rocks called Dokdo
- but claimed by Japan as Takeshima. There is good
fishing, there may be gas reserves, and two
sensible neighbors could sort this out amicably.
No chance. Every now and then Tokyo
reiterates its claim, and Koreans go ballistic. In
2006 there was nearly a naval clash there, until
Japan backed off. This implies that both are
equally to blame, but actually there's an
asymmetry. Brad Glosserman of Pacific Forum-CSIS
put it well in 2008, quoted in an excellent New
York Times piece
on Dokdo by Choe Sang-hun. In Japan "there is a
small group for whom it matters and a smaller
group for whom it matters in an emotional sense",
whereas in South Korea "it is a really mobilizing,
energizing situation that has managed to strike a
chord ... South Koreans have taken it to their
heart."
Is this really an issue that
should be so mobilizing and energizing? If we're
talking -izings, how about prioritizing? The
danger in all this is that harping on the past, or
focusing on what in truth are minor matters, may
blind you to present danger that you miss the real
risks now.
In 2012, is South Korea really
threatened by Japan? Come off it. Is there a shred
of evidence that Tokyo still pursues its pre-1945
dreams of conquest? Pull the other one. A tiny
bunch of nasty nutters may still harbor such
fantasies, but it ain't happening and it ain't
gonna happen.
Beached
whale Koreans like to quote a proverb: When
whales fight, the shrimp's back is broken. But
South Korea today is no shrimp; more of a lithe
dolphin. Even North Korea is a well-armored crab.
And Japan? A beached whale, surely. (No
reference intended to its bad habit of killing the
real thing - for "science", as if! - in which
South Korea unaccountably now wants to join it.)
Far from a threat, Japan looks all washed
up. It's still a huge economy, and people live
well. But the trend? Population is falling, and
growth has yet to recover after the "lost decade"
of the 1990s. Politics is a mess, as prime
ministers come and go. Japan is turning inward:
Fewer of the young are going abroad, as the
perceptive Robert Dujarric wrote
recently.
Add nature's terrible blow to
Tohoku last year, and what it revealed about
nuclear fragility at Fukushima, and all in all you
feel sorry for Japan. This, a threat? You have got
to be joking.
But Koreans aren't joking.
They are in earnest, though barking frantically up
the wrong tree. Some go totally over the top. The
Hankyoreh on June 30 said that Lee Myung-bak and
company "will face ongoing criticism for
attempting to sign an alleged reincarnation of the
1905 treaty that made Korea a protectorate of
Japan, opening the road to full colonization".
''Alleged'' doesn't mitigate the utter
falsity of so fantastical a comparison. How can a
minor and equal info-sharing pact be likened to
the Ulsa treaty that Japan imposed on Korea more
than a century ago, as a prelude to annexing it
five years later? Why would a serious newspaper
even repeat such a stupid analogy, without
criticizing it as the arrant paranoid nonsense it
is?
Sometimes I fear for Koreans. We all
need to check the weather, and whether our
protection is adequate - politically as well as
literally. Though no longer a prawn in anyone's
game, South Korea does find itself in a
potentially seismic area, metaphorically speaking.
Where might a tsunami roll in from? North
Korea, obviously. No one can be sure how that will
end. Japan is equally threatened, so you'd think
Seoul might make common cause here.
Or
China? That can't be ruled out. Not to demonize
the Middle Kingdom, as some do. But it is a rising
power flexing its muscles, it's not a democracy,
and there are nationalist elements that need
watching. If the growth juggernaut ever shudders
to a halt or even a slowdown, social tensions
already evident could spin out of control. Koreans
should keep a weather eye.
Two other
neighbors complete the picture. Russia? Nah; so
last century. Japan? Ditto. These are yesterday's
foes. Time to bury the hatchet, look to the
future, and start seeing straight.
If you
keep refighting yesterday's battles, you risk
being unprepared for tomorrow's. And if you keep
reopening old wounds, they will never heal. South
Koreans need to move on.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research
fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds
University, and a freelance consultant, writer and
broadcaster on Korean affairs. He has visited
South Korea some 25 times in the past 30 years,
starting in 1982.
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